Friday, 21 October 2011

Wednesday, 12 October 2011

The list of adjectives is something of wonder. Behold the modest adjective. It can leap tall buildings in a single bound. It makes the average citizen smarter and kinder. It keeps you in the cleanest car on the block. Such potent words should be used wisely. Read on and learn how to use your adjective powers for good.
An adjective's job is to modify a noun or pronoun. They are always near the noun or pronoun they are describing. Be careful how you use adjectives such as interesting, beautiful, great, wonderful, or exciting. Many adjectives like these are overused and add little definition to a sentence. Instead, show your reader or listener what you are talking about by using verbs and nouns creatively. Sprinkle fewer well-chosen adjectives for interest.
Adjectives are often used to describe the degree of modification.
The adjective forms are positive, comparative, and superlative.
This tree is tall. (positive)
That tree is taller. (comparative)
The last tree in the row is the tallest. (superlative)
A handful of adjectives have irregular forms of positive, comparative, and superlative usage.
These include good/better/best, bad/worse/worst, little/less/least, much-many-some/more/most, far/further/furthest.
My lunch was good, hers was better, and yours was the best.Proper adjectives are derived from proper nouns. They commonly describe something in terms of nationality, religious affiliation, or culture.The following lists are just a sampling of adjectives in the English language.

They are categorized by the type of attribute they describe. Use your dictionary or thesaurus to add to each list or use the complete list below this one.

Word History: English is derived from England, one would think. But in fact the language name is found long before the country name. The latter first appears as Englaland around the year 1000, and means "the land of the Engle," that is, the Angles. The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes were the three Germanic tribes who emigrated from what is now Denmark and northern Germany and settled in England beginning about the fourth century a.d. Early on, the Angles enjoyed a rise to power that must have made them seem more important than the other two tribes, for all three tribes are indiscriminately referred to in early documents as Angles. The speech of the three tribes was conflated in the same way: they all spoke what would have been called *Anglisc, or "Anglish," as it were. By the earliest recorded Old English, this had changed to Englisc. In Middle English, the first vowel had already changed further to the familiar () of today, as reflected in the occasional spellings Ingland and Inglish. Thus the record shows that the Germanic residents of what Shakespeare called "this sceptered isle" knew that they were speaking English long before they were aware that they were living in England.